


Holding On

by NaturalandReal (icyzephyr)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hell, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 09:10:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icyzephyr/pseuds/NaturalandReal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel sold his soul eleven years ago and finds himself dragged by tooth and claw to only be hung up on the rack. Sam, a mysterious boy makes a connection with Castiel and make a plan to escape hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holding On

**Author's Note:**

> This was done for the Sasst Secret Santa Exchange over at Sastielweek.tumblr.com and was done for this prompt given by Harkpellegrino: 
> 
> Prompt 3: semi AU! Castiel and Sam both sold their souls and find solidarity in each other while in hell. Bonus; They eventually escape. *mild violence/torture is fine, but I want a happy ending.
> 
> I hope my exchange is done to their (your) liking!

When Castiel first arrives in hell there is nothing but heat and burning, he is strung up by chains and no matter how he moves, it sears straight into his wrists. He hangs there for what seemed to be thirty years and he refuses to become one of them, the ones who slice into souls and take pieces for themselves, gaining just a little more power.  
They are almost always the same faces and those same techniques harden him after a while, he could take it. What did get to him were the screams, the dropping souls as they left the rack. Often, Castiel looks from where he hangs into the core of hell below and draws his eyes up only to see blackened rock.

I sold my soul for this view.

He slumps with the chains holding him up, breathing ragged and barely able to keep his eyes open. Sleep and tired does not exist in hell but he still feels fatigue. He’s tired and he burns. ** **  
****

This moment is nothing in particular when a new face floats towards him and stops, to look up at him, Castiel only stares back. That’s all he can do while he waits to be cut into the orange blade, cut into ridges along one side.

They were close enough that he could see the boy’s face. What he saw was nothing short of a battle. Hazel and black, swirling and mixing, churning colors that made Castiel wondered if humanity could still thrive here or if this boy was just slower at losing it than others. The boy begins a cut down his shoulder and it’s different than the others, he is not numb to this and he screams. It’s fire that splits his soul open and ice that fills it and he gasps and struggles against his restraints and he cannot plead, there is never mercy here in this place.

When it stops, he’s gasping for air he does not actually need and he looks at him and the boy closes his eyes and raises the dagger high above his head, and Castiel braces himself but refuses to say “Please, let me down.”

_Clank._

He falls, the air of hell whips and strikes him with blasts of steam. He hits clear wavering heat that is impossibly solid. Castiel looks up and sees the racks far above, all the souls lined up on the steel and he wonders, why me? The figure of the boy vanishes and Castiel sees no trace of him for another fifty years.

He loses track after that. Even free, Castiel wonders if it would have been better to have said yes to the boy, to join them, because walking in hell might be worse than a fate as a torturer. He starts to believe it. He walks, the soles of feet turn black and the longer he walks the blacker he becomes and he wonders if he can die slower in hell and there’s something more - another layer of hell. Castiel fears he is turning into something he never thought of.

Hell is full of paths and turns that lead nowhere. His calves begin the process of charring when he finds the boy again, curled up against rocks and still his eyes are hazel if maybe a little more black. Castiel wonders how long one can fight this process.

He approaches carefully but the boy does nothing as he draws closer and crouches to meet him. The boy looks up and watches him, Castiel crosses his legs and sits on the rock closest to him, wincing.

“Why did you do it?”

He wastes no time with formalities and the boy only tilts his head. He keeps his eyes locked on Castiel. “Because, I understood.”

“Understood what?”

“How you got here. We are here for the same reasons.”

Castiel is silent, why was he here? Because he saved lives? Because he said yes and kissed the form of a possessed native on the battlefield? It had been so long he had almost forgotten what he had been holding onto.

“You saved lives?” Castiel murmurs and the boy nods.

“My brother’s.”

Castiel freezes and searches the boy’s face. He isn’t lying. “What did you sell your soul for?”

The boy laughs and narrows his eyes, “It won’t matter. I’ll be out of here soon enough.”

“How do you plan to do that?” It feels a lot hotter now, so much thicker and Castiel knows it can’t because they’re in hell.

“Holding onto to what makes me human. Why I did it in the first place and I’m going to find a way out of here.”

Castiel blinks, turning over what he has said but how can that be? Every path he’s ever taken here has brought him in circles and only led to his scorched form.

“You don’t seem to be doing a good job of that, holding onto that reason.”

The boy’s comment blindsides him and he glares. “What is your name anyway?”

“Sam.”

Castiel can see himself reflected in his eyes now too, it’s not just his legs and feet that are affected, his face has long deep gashes of black and where his eyes were they are mostly black and little blue remains. He nods, taking in the name and responds, “Castiel.”

Sam returns the nod and stands up and begins hopping up on ledges, hanging and swinging on the first and sitting with his legs dangling off it, looking down at Castiel. “We’re going to find the entrance.”

He says this as if its the easiest thing in the world and Castiel nearly scoffs, rage boiling inside him. One hundred and eighty eight years of this heat and choking on molten rock and ash and this boy proclaims there’s a way out, he narrows his eyes and casts a look down. The same view he has seen for nearly two hundred years, hell, ocean of fire and he looks at his hands: black.

“Anger will do that to you. It turns you quicker.”

Castiel worries his lip and closes his eyes, trying to remember what it was like before. What was before? His unit, his brothers, the war. He remembers the kindness of the those he was saving, their bright eyes and ... the cool yellow of healing from his palm. He looks at Sam now, who is still watching him carefully from his post.

“Will you come? I know you’re not too far gone. I know you remember what it is like to be human, what it is like not to know the scorch of the floor.”

Castiel nods and he too, grabs hold of the rock and swings him up and Sam shakes his full head of hair and Castiel follows. Everything is still hot, it still burns, but the more Castiel stays with Sam... he’s sure everything does not hurt as much and when they rest after some time. Sam seems to remember all on his own but his hope shows Castiel his own brightness.

When they rest, they tuck themselves shoulder to shoulder under the roof of rocks. Sam looks to Castiel and smiles. “We’ll make it soon. It feels like hell-time is passing twenty times faster but longer, slower, somehow. You feel it this way too, right?”

Castiel nods and looks at the boy. He’s younger than himself and the memory of what heartache feels like strikes him. “Sam, how did you end up here?”

There is just the silence between them but the screams and roars of the flames and hot winds surge onward. It takes more than a few moments for Sam to be able to answer him, he’s searching the fires below and then the crevices of the rocks on which they sit, and he looks to Castiel again.

“My brother, Dean, was very sick. My mother, she died shortly after I was born and my dad took care of us. He was an ex-marine, he worked us hard. He drilled us every weekend morning, sundays were the earliest but my brother... he started getting sick. It started with a cough, it was small but it got worse. Dad stopped drilling us for a while and took him to a doctor after a week of the coughing.”

Sam pauses and Castiel presses his shoulder into Sam’s, not sure if he was trying to give his partner comfort or to himself.

“Turns out he developed cancer, it was limiting his ability to breathe. He was 16 and I was 13. Dad blamed himself, throwing himself into drinking and stamping on his catridges of cigarettes. I tried to tell dad it wasn’t his fault but... I’d never seen him madder, screamed at me too. I stayed with Dean but watching him become nothing like himself, I don’t ... “

Castiel did not press for details and only nods and Sam continues, faintly.

“One day at the hospital, I kept praying to the angels, they said fluid was filling his chest and dad was in tears. Dad told me not to touch him when I tried to hug him, he wouldn’t let me touch Dean either and no matter how hard I prayed to God or the angels didn’t listen. That’s when he showed up. Yellow eyed, almost gold... and he came in the form of a nurse, telling me he was an angel, that he could fix Dean in exchange for my soul. I did not hesitate, not with Dean like that. I sealed it with a kiss that tasted like ash and ten years later, here I am.”

Sam shrugs and leans back against the rock wall. “What about you? Why’d you seal the deal?”

Castiel pursed his cracked lips and stumbled on the first word but the rest tumbled out easily. “I was a soldier. I wasn’t much but I was good in combat. I trained practically my whole life for these moments, to protect people, to save them. We were losing a lot of men that day, the bullets and the cracks of guns and the screams of the people we were trying to protect hurt. My unit around me seemed to fall even quicker but as I crossed, there was a boy. Young. Standing in the middle of the commotion, but his eyes were deep red and he held out his hand to me. I thought I was just going crazy, you know?”

“But he whispered to me, seeming to stop time around us and said, ‘If you give me your soul, you will have the power which you seek.’ In this case I wanted... healing, I wanted to save people - everyone. So I did, I spent the next eleven years doing nothing but that. Knowing I was going to die. I healed dying people, animals... I didn’t stop even when the nightmares started. I dreamt of those hounds, Sam.”

Sam nods, giving him a knowing look. Sam knew what it was like. He was right, he understood his reasons, he knew what it was like to want to save people, to do what was right and spare pain and they both sold their souls to do it.

“Heard them barking and growling at my door and by the day before my death, they were scratching at the foot of my bed, I gave up sleeping and wandered the streets, healing the sick who were homeless, before they attacked at midnight. Dragging me through a sewer, ripping my body to shreds...”

Sam shudders and squeezes his eyes shut, he knows, he definitely knows and Castiel brings an arm around his shoulders. “You make me human, though. I had nearly forgotten why I was here, who I really was beneath the layer of black hell is coating me with.”

“I know. Your eyes are bluer.”

Sam stands up holding his hand out to Castiel, looking up. “We keep each other human down here.”

Castiel grasps Sam’s hand and stands up, curtly nodding. The ascent is hard and long, they lose count of hell time but aren’t even sure what they are looking for when they both become barred from further movement.

Castiel and Sam both know who it is, they both grab each other’s hand, Castiel looking down at Sam who seems frozen, but Castiel pushes onward. The demons won’t keep their souls but it’s not long before Sam is ensnared in what looks to be a yellow cloudy light. Castiel hangs on, screaming to him, trying to reach him but Sam’s eyes are wide and seeing things he cannot possibly imagine, his own feet are tangled in red and he kicks it off. Thinking only of Sam as he pries through the veil.

“Sam. Listen to me. You showed me hoping was good, that we could go this. We didn’t come this far to lose to them, did we?”

Sam wavers, actually moving his eyes, as if he can actually see Castiel now.

“You did this for Dean. He’s alive up there, _you saved him_. Your dad is there. Missing you. You still have a life to live up there. Sam. You cut me down off that rack, you could have slipped then but you didn’t. You saw hope there, please don’t give in now.”

There are a few seconds where red tries to choke him, to sever his hold but he doesn’t let it, remembering the faces of the healed people he laid his hands on and most of all the face of his fellow soldier when he coughed back to life.

Sam shudders and screams, crawling slowly, Castiel tugs him along before they’re barreling through light and sound, landing onto brown grass, prickling their hands and faces. They’re chilled as winter air nips their naked bodies and Sam is on his back, sprawled, looking up at the sky and laughs.

“We did it. I almost didn’t...”

Castiel quickly shushes him, “But you did, we’re here...this is grass. This is cold air.”

Castiel can only smile and help the boy up. Sam is taller than him and he holds his wrist and they’re both dirty and Castiel checks his body, he shows no signs of burns and he has not felt cold air in centuries. ** **  
****

“I’m ready to go home.” Sam announces, and Castiel wonders how he expects to go back to Dean now after all of that. After being dead and Castiel wonders where he fits in this world now. But, tugging Sam along in search for clothes and a way home, he’s sure he found another purpose outside of what brought him to this moment and he knows he found something bigger and far more precious than he ever hoped for.

 


End file.
